Construction Physics
The Birth of the Grid
The day must come when electricity will be for everyone, as the waters of the rivers and the wind of...
a week ago
The day must come when electricity will be for everyone, as the waters of the rivers and the wind of heaven. It should not merely be supplied, but lavished, that men may use it at their will, as the air they breathe. - Emile Zola, “Travail”, 1901
Construction Physics
Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?
It’s become fairly common knowledge that Yellowstone National Park, in addition to being incredibly...
a month ago
It’s become fairly common knowledge that Yellowstone National Park, in addition to being incredibly beautiful, is sitting on top of an enormous supervolcano that catastrophically erupts every few hundred thousand years. Unlike normal volcanoes, which tend to produce large...
Construction Physics
Book Review: Healthy Buildings
Healthy Buildings, written by John Macomber and Joseph Allen is, as the title suggests, a book about...
3 weeks ago
Healthy Buildings, written by John Macomber and Joseph Allen is, as the title suggests, a book about how buildings affect health. Allen is a former environmental consultant, professor of public health, and director of Harvard’s “Healthy Buildings” program. Macomber is a lecturer...
Construction Physics
How much safer has construction gotten?
When talking about (the lack of) construction productivity growth, or the fact that we used to build...
2 months ago
When talking about (the lack of) construction productivity growth, or the fact that we used to build things much faster than we do today, commentators frequently mention the safety of the construction workers. On this view, construction speed/efficiency and worker risk are a...
Construction Physics
How did solar power get cheap part II
(note: all quotes are from Nemet’s How Solar Energy Became Cheap unless otherwise noted.) Welcome to...
a month ago
(note: all quotes are from Nemet’s How Solar Energy Became Cheap unless otherwise noted.) Welcome to Part II of “How did Solar Power Get Cheap?” To recap Part I, the modern solar photovoltaic (PV) cell was invented at Bell Labs in 1954. Early markets were almost entirely...
Construction Physics
Could ChatGPT become an architect?
OpenAI recently released an updated version of their GPT large language model, GPT-4, and have...
2 months ago
OpenAI recently released an updated version of their GPT large language model, GPT-4, and have incorporated it into their ChatGPT chatbot. In case you've been living under a rock, ChatGPT is a chatbot that uses large language models, which use artificial neural networks
Construction Physics
Which city builds skyscrapers the fastest?
Last week we looked at trends in skyscraper construction speed for New York and Chicago, finding...
2 months ago
Last week we looked at trends in skyscraper construction speed for New York and Chicago, finding that New York has gotten significantly slower at building skyscrapers over time. Chicago, on the other hand, has declined in speed less steadily, and currently builds skyscrapers much...
Construction Physics
The Rise of Steel - Part I
One of the defining characteristics of the modern world is the ubiquity of steel. Nearly every...
4 months ago
One of the defining characteristics of the modern world is the ubiquity of steel. Nearly every product of industrial civilization relies on steel, either as a component or as part of the equipment used to produce it. Without it, Vaclav Smil notes in “Still the Iron Age”, modern...
Construction Physics
How did solar power get cheap? Part I
Solar photovoltaics (PV) have become one of the cheapest sources of electricity. Lazard’s estimate...
a month ago
Solar photovoltaics (PV) have become one of the cheapest sources of electricity. Lazard’s estimate of unsubsidized levelized cost of energy (LCOE)
Construction Physics
The blast furnace - 800 years of technology improvement
The modern world uses shocking amounts of steel - in the US, we make roughly 575 pounds of steel per...
3 months ago
The modern world uses shocking amounts of steel - in the US, we make roughly 575 pounds of steel per person per year. At the peak of US steelmaking in the late 1960s, it was closer to 1500 pounds per person, which is roughly how much China makes now.
Construction Physics
Roman vs Modern Concrete
There's a new paper out exploring some of the chemical mechanisms at work in Roman concrete. As per...
4 months ago
There's a new paper out exploring some of the chemical mechanisms at work in Roman concrete. As per usual, it’s triggered a round of enthusiastic discussion of Roman concrete, and how its ability to last for millennia puts modern concrete (which often fails after a few decades)...
Construction Physics
Building Fast and Slow: The Empire State Building and the World Trade Center (Part I)
The Empire State Building was completed in 1931. At a height of 1250 feet [0], it was the world's...
6 months ago
The Empire State Building was completed in 1931. At a height of 1250 feet [0], it was the world's tallest building, exceeding the recently completed Chrysler building by 202 feet. It would hold that title for the next 39 years, until 1970 when it was surpassed in height by...
Construction Physics
When did New York start building slowly?
(Note: the analysis below of floor plate size vs construction speed is incorrect due to...
2 months ago
(Note: the analysis below of floor plate size vs construction speed is incorrect due to autocorrelation effects. For a correct analysis, see the subsequent post here) It’s good to be able to build things quickly. The faster you build something, the quicker the benefits from it...
Construction Physics
Construction Productivity - Structural Steel
This week we’re continuing our investigation of productivity trends in US construction. We...
3 months ago
This week we’re continuing our investigation of productivity trends in US construction. We previously looked at single family home construction, and noted that the number of hours required to construct 100 square feet of single family home has slightly increased over the past 50...
Construction Physics
Building Fast and Slow Part IV: Construction of the World Trade Center
This is Part IV in a series comparing the construction of the Empire State Building and the World...
5 months ago
This is Part IV in a series comparing the construction of the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. Part I covers the design and construction of the Empire State Building, Part II covers the initial development of the World Trade Center, and Part III covers the
Construction Physics
On Klein on Construction
In the New York Times, Ezra Klein investigated the recent Goolsbee and Syverson paper on...
3 months ago
In the New York Times, Ezra Klein investigated the recent Goolsbee and Syverson paper on construction productivity we recently looked at. Klein suggests that the stagnation in construction productivity might be the result of organized special interests increasingly leveraging...
Construction Physics
Goolsbee and Syverson on Construction Productivity
Several people have asked me about a new NBER working paper that takes a look at construction...
4 months ago
Several people have asked me about a new NBER working paper that takes a look at construction productivity (a popular topic around here), “The Strange and Awful Path of Productivity in the US Construction Sector,” by Austan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson. This paper doesn’t bring any...
Construction Physics
Building Fast and Slow Part II - The World Trade Center
Part II in our series comparing the construction of two Tallest Building in the World projects - the...
6 months ago
Part II in our series comparing the construction of two Tallest Building in the World projects - the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. See here for Part I. Unless otherwise noted, information and quotes are from “City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World...
Construction Physics
The Rise of Steel Part II
Welcome to the Rise of Steel part II. We previously looked at the early stages of industrialization...
4 months ago
Welcome to the Rise of Steel part II. We previously looked at the early stages of industrialization of iron and steelmaking, between roughly 1200 and 1850. To briefly recap, making steel was an involved, multistep process. Iron would first be smelted from iron ore in a blast...
Construction Physics
Building Fast and Slow Part III: Design of the World Trade Center
This is Part III in a series comparing the construction of the Empire State Building and the World...
5 months ago
This is Part III in a series comparing the construction of the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. Part I covers the design and construction of the Empire State Building, and Part II covers the initial development of the World Trade Center
Construction Physics
Weekend roundup - Icon, Diamond Age, Cuby, Gropyus
Since there’s more interesting things happening in construction than I can cover in a weekly post...
4 months ago
Since there’s more interesting things happening in construction than I can cover in a weekly post (especially if I’m spending posts writing about things that happened 800 years ago), I’m experimenting with occasionally sending out a brief roundup of interesting links related to...
Construction Physics
Does construction ever get cheaper?
I've mentioned a few times that I generally prefer looking at construction progress through the lens...
4 months ago
I've mentioned a few times that I generally prefer looking at construction progress through the lens of cost indexes rather than productivity indexes. Whereas productivity indexes try to track changes in the amount of construction we get for a given amount of labor (for labor...
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